Who would have thought losing a NBA championship might result in something positive for the Warriors.

Kevin Durant announced that his decision to join the Dubs was due to their slip up against the Cavaliers in the NBA finals.

“[My agent] Rich [Kleiman], who’s here, we were watching Game 7,” Durant told reporters at a ceremony in which the Warriors were presented with the ENCORE Award from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. “Well, as it started to unfold, it was, ‘No question, no way could you go to this team.’ And I was just like a kid, like, ‘I’d really like playing with these guys. I’d get wide-open 3s, I could just run up and down the court, get wide-open layups.’ I was basically begging him. I was like, ‘Yo, this would be nice.’”

Durant continued, explaining how his thinking changed as the Finals progressed and the Warriors went from being up 3-1 to losing the title.

“As they lost, it became more and more real every day,” Durant said. “You start to think about it even more. To see if I would fit. Then once I sat down with these guys, everything that I wanted to know about them, they kinda showed me. But we don’t have to talk about [what would have happened if the Warriors had won the title], because they didn’t get the job done, and they came after me.

“I guess you could say I’m glad that they lost.”

Durant is averaging 18.3 points on 10 shots per game through three games this preseason.

The Warriors’ first regular-season game with their newest All-Star is slated for Oct. 25 at home in Oakland against the San Antonio Spurs.

McClaren has signed a deal until the end of the 2017/18 season and returns to the club 17 months after he was sacked.

In a statement on the club website, McClaren says: “I am excited to be back at Derby County as the club’s manager.

“I have a great affiliation with the club, having been here on three previous occasions, and I am really delighted at the prospect of finishing what we started back in September 2013.

“I regret how my time at Derby ended back in 2015 and I am very motivated to put things right for the club and our supporters.

“My ultimate aspiration remains exactly what it was before, to take Derby County back to the Premier League.”

“This football club has fantastic ambition, brilliant supporters and wonderful backing from the Chairman Mel Morris. I am looking forward to working alongside Mel, as well as Sam Rush who initially brought me back here in 2013. Sam and I worked very well together previously and I am certain we can pick up where we left off.

“For me, it was vitally important that Chris Powell and the existing team remained on the coaching staff. When I was assistant to Jim Smith in the 1990s, Chris was part of the squad and a key player for us.

“He had a fine playing career, being capped by England as well as enjoying many years in the Premier League, so to have someone as talented as him as my assistant is really important.”

Derby have had a miserable start to the Championship season and are currently in 20th spot, having picked up just 10 points from 11 games including two wins.

Victor Anichebe has been talking about why he opted to join Sunderland in the summer rather than take ‘crazy offers’ from abroad.

The striker penned a one-year deal with the Black Cats after leaving West Brom at the end of last season.

“I was so close to going abroad, I wanted a change, but then the manager came in here and this was a good opportunity to stay in England and in the Premier League for another year,” he told the Newcastle Chronicle. “There were a lot of offers to go all these kinds of places, crazy offers in different countries but sometimes money is not always everything.

“The way I left West Brom, I didn’t really want to leave without playing. I knew a long time before I left I was going to see out my contract and wanted to see the next opportunity. So, I took a long time to decide what I wanted to do.

“I knew about Sunderland and the manager and a couple of other English teams, there was a lot of interest in the Championship too. Lower teams in the Premier League too and offers from abroad.

“Some of them were very attractive. I like travelling and experiencing new things so maybe that is something I will look forward to in future.”

Striker Michy Batshuayi has no intention of leaving Chelsea when the winter transfer window opens in January, with the Belgium international desperate to stay and fight for his first-team place at Stamford Bridge.

Swiss midfielder Granit Xhaka says he made the right decision joining Arsenal last summer, a club with “a lot of class”.

Chelsea wide man Willian has rubbished recent reports linking him with a move to PSG, with the Brazil international claiming he would love to finish his career in west London.

MANCHESTER EVENING NEWS

Man City boss Pep Guardiola would “love” to coach Argentina one day, according to La Albiceleste striker Sergio Aguero.

LIVERPOOL ECHO

Liverpool are interested in signing Inter Milan defender Geoffrey Kondogbia in January, according to reports in the Italian media.

Everton defender Brendan Galloway, who is currently spending a season-long loan spell at West Brom, says he is determined to win back his place in the Baggies’ starting line-up.

NEWCASTLE CHRONICLE

Newcastle midfielder Mo Diame, who joined the club from Hull last summer, has revealed he is yet to live up to the expectations of boss Rafa Benitez at St James’ Park.

Sunderland frontman Victor Anichebe claims he opted to join the Black Cats rather than move abroad because “money is not always everything”.

BIRMINGHAM MAIL

Steve Bruce, who is expected to be confirmed as Aston Villa’s new manager today, intends to lure Hull winger Ahmed Elmohamady to Villa Park in January, according to reports in the English press.

Midfielder Kieran Richardson, who left Aston Villa at the end of last season, is on the verge of joining Cardiff on a free transfer, say reports.

EXPRESS & STAR

New Wolves boss Walter Zenga has revealed he enjoys the pressure of managing the Championship club, despite overseeing back-to-back defeats before the international break.

Walsall frontman Simeon Jackson says he wants to score more goals for his team, despite netting five times in his opening 12 matches for the club.

THE SENTINEL

Derby ‘keeper Lee Grant has admitted he would love to extend his six-month loan spell at Stoke.

HULL DAILY MAIL

Caretaker Hull manager Mike Phelan is still waiting to find out if he will become the club’s manager on a full-time basis.

LANCASHIRE TELEGRAPH

Burnley boss Sean Dyche says on-loan defender Jon Flanagan is liking life at Turf Moor, despite the Liverpool full-back having not enjoyed much game time with the Clarets so far this season.

Former Chelsea striker Adrian Mutu has taken up his first job in management at Romanian club Dinamo Bucharest.

Mutu, who called time on a 19-year playing career in May, has been named general manager of a side for whom he played between 1999 and 2000, scoring 29 goals in 42 games.

“I am pleased that Adrian Mutu is with us and am confident that his experience in international football will lead us to a new standard of performance both domestically and in Europe,” Dinamo’s majority shareholder, Ionut Negoita, told the club’s official website.

“It’s an honour for me that Dinamo offered me the chance to debut in a role so important and I thank Mr Negoita for this huge challenge in my career,” Mutu, who also counts Juventus and Fiorentina among his former clubs, said. “I hope to repay this trust.”

Mutu, now 37, joined Chelsea from Parma in summer 2003 but his contract was terminated a year later after he tested positive for cocaine.

Versace’s diffusion label, Versus Versace has revealed that singer Zayn Malik will join it as a designer.

The announcement was made by the vice-president of the Versace group, Donatella Versace.

“Versus is the rock and roll soul of the Versace family and has always been associated with music,” Ms. Versace, who owns Versus Versace, said. “Everyone from the Foo Fighters to Lenny Kravitz has played at the shows, and it is all about rebellion. For me, Zayn was the perfect fit.”

Zayn Malik partners with Versace

“That said, I was not exactly a fan of that band,” she continued. “But then I met him again when he started to date Gigi, who I work with all the time. And he impressed me very much — he was so mature, so thoughtful, treated her like such a gentleman. They are very nice young people, a lovely couple, in fact. And then he told me how much he loved fashion. It was then I knew he was the right face for what I had in mind.

“Many celebrities do clothing lines that just aren’t relevant,” Ms. Versace said. “This one? It will be. He’s smart to do it with me.”

International Day Of The Girl Child: Abused By Her Father, By Peace Amarie Odioko

Growing up as a girl-child in our society means you have to follow so many instructions and rules laid down through generations for your gender. ‘Do this’. ‘You can’t do this’. ‘Shut up’. You are practically a slave to your father’s, brothers, and society’s demands. You have no mind of your own. They have all the control and you have none.

This piece was written by Peace Amarie Odioko. The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of 360Nobs.com.

If you were brought up to think brothers and fathers are supposed to be the first protector of the girl-child, you can’t be more wrong because there are people who are experiencing the opposite.

I once spoke about abuse in a seminar for young girls in church, and I asked anyone who had experienced the things I talked about to see me privately for talks. Because they felt I had all the answers, I got an earful. The stories were many and some of them could make our forefathers turn in their graves and they still make my skin crawl till date, but since I promised not to divulge these, I won’t share them here.

But there was a particular case that I handed over to the Welfare Co-ordinator to take up because it froze my heart and I will talk about it briefly.

The girl was in her teens – just about 14, and she’s not bad looking. Tall and lithe, with lovely bones. Her father started sleeping with her when she was 10. The first time it happened, she had complained to her mother who had gone on to give her drugs for high fever, until she had caught them herself and was promptly shut up by threats from her husband.

Maybe due to the stigma that divorce and taking her daughter to safety would bring upon her, she stayed in the marriage while the daughter continued to be defiled by the father. By the way, she’s a full time housewife, fully dependent on the man for all her needs.

I can’t write all the details here but suffice to say that the father is a proprietor of a flourishing school in mainland, Lagos, not some rural, ignorant man. So you see, child sexual abuse doesn’t only happen in dysfunctional families. Offenders are ‘normal’ men who are involved in ‘normal’ relationships and have normal vocational/professional and social roles.

So, if perchance you’ve heard tales of fathers who sleep with their daughters and have refused to believe them. Believe these. They happen.

Even though I was convinced the young girl was telling me the truth, my pastor and his wife found it hard to accept that the father, a church elder, was an incestous Paedophile and had expressed amazement that I had just accepted the girl’s word without giving the father a chance to have his say. At the heart of this attitude is denial.

I couldn’t explain it to them. Partly because I knew from reading about the subject that children seldom, if ever, lie about abuse. And partly because I knew instinctively from somewhere deep inside that she was telling me the truth because adult power and authority are such that physical force is unnecessary.

When the truth finally came out, the mother was angry with me that I had not kept their troubles ‘within the family’. So that was it. I was to be blamed for reporting the abuse to the appropriate authorities. Who gets protected by dealing with such abuse within the family? Only the abuser!

There are so many girl-children hurting, and we may never know how much. There are so many who need someone to talk to just to help them heal, but there are no listeners around. We think abusers are ‘sick’, ‘deviant’ and ‘mad’ but that labelling of abusers as being different to the norm intellectualises these issues, externalises the causes, denies responsibility, implies infrequent occurrence and effectively negates the experiences of victims of abuse. The realities of sexual abuse involve highly emotive issues – issues that most of us would like to avoid because they are extremely painful.

Of course, we as a society are also in denial. We warn our children about ‘stranger danger’ but the truth is that the vast majority of abused children are abused by relatives or close friends. We would rather objectify offenders and think of them as shadowy figures but nothing will change until we stop burying our heads in the sand. Child abuse is prevalent in our society. Talking about it is forbidden. Secrecy makes it easier for men to abuse children. There is enormous pressure on children not to tell and when they do, they may have to tell several people before they are believed. We are such a nation of insipid hypocrites, pretending like hell in public, never saying a dirty word, yet doing such nauseating things in private that are downright hideous. This is the bottom line. And an abused child is one too many.

My heart goes out to all victims of senseless sexual abuse. If you’re one and you need help, or maybe you need to just talk it out and heal, do, please, get in touch with the relevant people.

To mark the International Day of the Girl Child, I remain committed to the emancipation of the girl child. Together, we must stand against child marriage, circumcision and poor education and I am calling for a world free of violence for all girls.

I look at the girl child and see the future. Like technology, the girl-child is powerful enough to shape the destiny of a nation and dictate where the globe is headed.

Let’s end child marriage, let’s keep the girl child in school, let’s advocate for restoring dignity to the girl child. Let’s pledge this day to nurture and empower the girl child. Let’s begin with our family, and our community. When a girl progresses, the world progresses. Use your voice to speak for the girl child, today.

Peace Amarie Odioko writes from Lagos and can be reached on jovodaf@gmail.com.

This piece was written by Peace Amarie Odioko. The views and opinions expressed here are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of 360Nobs.com.

Former Derby County manager Steve McClaren is being interviewed today about a possible return to the iPro Stadium.

McClaren was sacked in May last year after Derby failed to reach the Championship playoffs, despite spending most of the season in the top six.

Talks began on Tuesday morning and progress has been swift. If confirmed, this will be McClaren’s second stint in charge, having been sacked after two years as manager at the iPro in 2015.

His return would be controversial as many Derby fans still blame McClaren for the team’s late failure to win promotion, saying his refusal to rule out a move to Newcastle was a distraction.

McClaren went on to become Newcastle’s head coach, three weeks after leaving Derby. His reign at the Magpies lasted less than a year and he was sacked in March this year.

Derby striker Darren Bent told Sky Sports that the return of McClaren would be welcomed by the players – but a big surprise.

“The players will be a bit baffled….because we didn’t see that coming,” he said. “From what we heard when he left it was left on quite bad terms but he was a fantastic manager.

“Anyone who watched us in that period would say we played some of the best football we had played in a long, long time so from a footballing point of view it would make sense.

“But at the same time Chris Powell has been doing a fantastic job as well and if McClaren gets the job we’d like to hope that Chris stays and helps him out as well. If he doesn’t and Chris gets it then we will be equally as happy.”

Tottenham have held a meeting with the representatives of Corinthians full-back Guilherme Arana, reports Todomercadoweb.es.

Spurs are interested in the Brazilian, 19, and met with the left back’s agents on Tuesday.

According to the Spanish website, Spurs are keen to ramp up negotiations in order to remain ahead of the teenager’s other suitors.

Spurs have two international left backs in their ranks with Danny Rose and Ben Davies competing for first-team football at White Hart Lane, but manager Mauricio Pochettino may yet want to bring in a younger left back to develop.

Arana, 19, has come up through the ranks with Corinthians having joined them way back in 2005, and has now made 26 appearances for the Brazilian giants, whilst he also spent time out on loan at Atletico Paranaense in 2015.

Osinbajo made this disclosure while speaking with a small group of radio journalists and producers at the Presidential Villa, in Abuja.

According to him, the implementation plans for the effective commencement of a number of the social investment programmes of the Muhammadu Buhari presidency has reached advanced stages as the selection of the first 200,000 unemployed graduates to get jobs is now being completed.

He said, “We expect that before the end of the month, we will engage 200,000 out of the 500,000 unemployed graduates the Buhari administration plans to hire in the N-Power jobs programme.

“Definitely, before the end of this month, we expect that several states would have come on stream with their home-grown school feeding programme. The programme will energise agriculture in the different states because it is what you plant that you feed the children with.

“We’ll be hiring caterers, cooks, etc in each state because it’ll be federal government-funded from primary 1 to 3 and the state governments, hopefully, would be able to cater for the other classes.

The VP added that the direct government jobs is meant “to keep this young people occupied, pay them some amount of money and also give them a device, which will also help them to learn several skills that they can develop as time goes on.”

Barcelona sporting director Robert Fernandez was in the stands to cast his eye over Switzerland’s World Cup qualifier in Andorra on Monday night, reports Fichajes.net.

Fernandez was there to scout the visitors’ defensive duo Stephan Lichtsteiner and Fabian Schar, with the latter opening the scoring from the penalty spot.

Barca have tracked the Hoffenheim centre back for some time, with their interest in him dating back to his time at his former club Basel.

Lichtsteiner is being targeted after falling down the pecking order at Juventus behind former Barca full-back Dani Alves, while Hoffenheim’s Schar is seen as potential replacement for Javier Mascherano.

Man Utd manager Jose Mourinho is lining up a move for Porto midfielder Hector Herrera, according to reports on Fichajes.net.

‘The Special One’ is understood to have expressed an interest in the Mexico international in the summer transfer window.
Herrera, 26, has a contract at the Dragao until the end of June 2019.

Herrera, who has picked up 46 caps for the Mexican national side, has established himself as one of the most consistent top performers in Primeira Liga having joined Porto in a €8million from Pachuca in 2013.

The news comes as 26-year-old endures his first mini crisis in Portugal. A slump in form has seen Porto drop to second in the division behind Benfica and Herrera stripped as captain in a bid to release pressure.

Man Utd manager Jose Mourinho is lining up a move for Porto midfielder Hector Herrera, according to reports on Fichajes.net.

‘The Special One’ is understood to have expressed an interest in the Mexico international in the summer transfer window.
Herrera, 26, has a contract at the Dragao until the end of June 2019.

Herrera, who has picked up 46 caps for the Mexican national side, has established himself as one of the most consistent top performers in Primeira Liga having joined Porto in a €8million from Pachuca in 2013.

The news comes as 26-year-old endures his first mini crisis in Portugal. A slump in form has seen Porto drop to second in the division behind Benfica and Herrera stripped as captain in a bid to release pressure.

Paco Alcacer has admitted he couldn’t turn down Barcelona when they made a move for him earlier this year.

The Valencia academy graduate ended his lengthy association with the Mestalla club when he joined Barca at the end of the summer transfer window.

The forward was asked about his move to the Nou Camp on Spanish radio station Cadena COPE and said:

“It’s very difficult to say no to Barcelona. I am a player that came from Valencia, I am Valencia [through and through] and it was a very difficult decision, but I think that for any player it is a step forward in their personal career and I think that I have done well.

“The day that I signed was a happy day, but of course, I have always said that Valencia gave me everything and thanks to them I am where I am.”

Paco Alcacer has admitted he couldn’t turn down Barcelona when they made a move for him earlier this year.

The Valencia academy graduate ended his lengthy association with the Mestalla club when he joined Barca at the end of the summer transfer window.

The forward was asked about his move to the Nou Camp on Spanish radio station Cadena COPE and said:

“It’s very difficult to say no to Barcelona. I am a player that came from Valencia, I am Valencia [through and through] and it was a very difficult decision, but I think that for any player it is a step forward in their personal career and I think that I have done well.

“The day that I signed was a happy day, but of course, I have always said that Valencia gave me everything and thanks to them I am where I am.”